BCC Infra raises Rs 250 cr from Edelweiss arm ECL Finance

NEW DELHI: Ghaziabad-based real estate developer BCC Infrastructures has raised .`250 crore from the NBFC arm of Edelweiss, ECL Finance, to develop the second phase of its 58-acre township project Bharat city in Ghaziabad. Kumar Bharat, director, BCC Infrastructures confirmed the structured debt transaction. “We will use around Rs 150 crore to repay an existing construction loan taken from HDFC Ltd and the rest will be used for development of phase two of our township,” said Bharat.
The township project had got an investment from HDFC PMS in the past but the fund had exited the project earlier. Bharat points out that in the current market home buyers are looking to buy properties that are complete rather than getting into early stage projects. They are also concerned about the ticket size of apartments. “Most of the apartments we have sold in the last one year are completed apartments.

That’s the preference people have. They do not want to take construction risk today,” he said. An email questionnaire sent to Edelweiss did not elicit any response. In the last one year, Edelweiss’ NBFC arm has invested significant sums in housing projects across the country. It recently put in Rs 725 crore jointly with IIFL in Bengaluru-based land aggregator and developer Manyata Promoters. It put in Rs 100 crore with SMC Global in builder MG Housing’s township project in Dharuhera near Gurgaon. Earlier it had invested Rs 200 crore in an under construction project of Saya Group in Ghaziabad.


A slowdown in home sales over the last two years has pushed builders, faced with a tight liquidity situation, to seek funding from NBFCs and other funds to complete their under construction projects, which in many cases in are delayed, and also to refinance their older loans. Ghaziabad-based builder VVIP raised Rs 120 crore from Reliance Capital last year to speed up construction. Noida-based Supertech raised Rs 100 crore from Indiabulls Real Estate Fund. Noida-based Prateek group had raised Rs 100 crore from Xander Finance for its township project in Ghaziabad.

Xander Finance also put in Rs 120 crore with Bengaluru-based real estate firm Mahaveer group In an earlier transaction, Piramal Fund Management and Clearwater Capital’s NBFC Altico Capital had agreed to invest Rs 725 crore in a project portfolio of Bengaluru-based Century Real Estate. Gurgaon-based builder Orris Infrastructure had raised Rs 325 crore from NBFC IndoStar Capital Recent data from property research firm Liases Foras shows that home sales in the top cities of India have grown in the last two quarters, providing hope. Home sales across the 8 top cities of India improved 6% year-on-year in the January-March 2016 quarter because of stagnant pricing, discounts from builders and also new launches at lower prices in some cities.